1-1-11

Happy New Year all! I love today's day - 1-1-11 - aaah, number patterns. Life would be so much more boring without you!

I don't normally go in for New Year's Resolutions ... but in 2011 I do have some goals, so in the interests of accountability, I'll post them here.

1 - A Drawing a Day

This is an activity I used to have to do when in graphic design college. I haven't been doing much art in recent years, and want to get back into it, and especially to improve my figure drawing skills. Producing one drawing a day - even just a quick sketch - will be a good way to get my "artistic eyes" working again, and while I know there will be days when I don't want to, it should hopefully also be fun. I will scan and post the occasional sketch here too.

Here's Drawing 1, some garlic which I harvested from my vegie garden yesterday :

2 - Frugal Living

We don't have much debt, compared to many - a credit card that has got a bit out of hand (but no loans or mortgage). We have been living a bit beyond our means, I gotta admit. We have a pretty frugal life anyway (a necessity when we're living off 1.2 incomes) - no movies, no theatre, very few holidays, few restaurant meals, and so on. Most of our income goes on rent, medical bills, prescriptions, food, car costs, and other bills - and that part can't really change much.

So 2011 will be a year of further tightening our belts, selling off some assets (second car, my recurve bow etc), buying more food from Aldi and less from Woolies, op shops, curbing the 'wanties', making do, being happy with what we've got (which is plenty!), cooking from the pantry, homemade gifts, knitting from my (let's face it) extensive stash, reusing, recycling, saving, and not buying more books, yarn, cookbooks, kitchen gadgets and tools (my biggest weakness, actually), cool stuff online, and so on.

We've been on this sort of regime many times in the past, so it hopefully won't be too hard to do. Having 3 of us at home instead of 4 should also help cut costs. Apart from cutting our debt, we're also saving for an energy-efficient fridge next year, and changing our fuel-inefficient old 1996 station wagon for a newer, smaller, fuel-efficient car.

3 - Regular Exercise

Aiming for a long walk, exercise bike ride, gardening, or a swim, or something, 3 or 4 times a week. While I really want to lose weight (the damned prednisolone has made me stack on the kilos, unfortunately, if inevitably), my main goal with the exercise is fitness. It's good for my hip, emotional well-being, and overall health. So, I'm not setting weight loss goals, they are too hard to achieve when on steroids, and I don't know how long I'll be on the meds. But being active is something I hope to be able to do.

So - it's out there, I've told you, now I just have to DO IT! LOL :)